The importance of due diligence

Albanian state institutions need to double efforts to target and punish small infractions to change cultural approach to obeying the rules.
Tirana Times Editorial
Faced with a massive crime wave when he took office as mayor of New York City in 1993, Rudy Giuliani, an American politician and lawyer, started his anti-crime efforts small. He instructed the police that no crime or infraction, no matter how small, would be properly followed and punished. So crimes that police would let slide on the past – things like trying to take the transit without a ticket, for example – all of sudden found proper policing. In going after the small stuff, doing its due diligence, the New York police were able to dramatically reduced crime in general. It turned out the people who broke the law for small things also did so in large ways or at least helped others to do so.
Fast forward to 2014 in Albania, and the latest revelation that the equivalent of $7 million has gone missing from a central bank facility over the past four years. The theft, which, according to the investigators was largely done by one employee addicted to gambling, shows that despite the presence of clear regulations and advanced technology to stop such thefts – the human element completely failed. The supervisors of the employee had not done their due diligence.
What has happened this week is very worrying. First, more than the actual monetary value lost, which is significant nonetheless, the larger problem is the damage to the image of the state and one of its most respected institutions.
Second, what happened at the Bank of Albania is part of a larger trend of a lack of due diligence in the operations of many Albanian institutions and organizations – that is a lack of taking all reasonable steps to avoid mishaps — sweating the small stuff.
Mundane rules, checks and audits are there for a reason. Yet they are often ignored in the name of “good enough” – often the preferred way of doing things in Albania.
Whether through mere incompetence or through darker motives, the lack of due diligence in this country is obvious from new roads constructed so poorly that they immediately require maintenance to the poor quality of services provided to the state by its citizens.
We have discussed this subject in the past, looking at vehicles allowed to be parked on sidewalks and blatant rule breakers of traffic laws. Some improvement in that sector is to be noted as the new government tries to project a better image for the country and itself this tourist season.
However these efforts need to be increased and be made to work in all sectors of life in the country if there is going to be any hope of creating the type of “systemic change” the governing coalition promised when it came to power.
At the end of the day, unless great attention is placed on small details, the change this country needs is not going to happen. As such, Albania needs to place renewed effort to target and punish small infractions — as well as obviously large ones — to change cultural approach to obeying the rules.